A city tour of LGBT history

Sukie De La Croix stands under a fire escape at 20 East Goethe St. Many years ago, people escaped through there from a police raid of a private party

Sukie De La Croix stands under a fire escape at 20 East Goethe St. Many years ago, people escaped through there from a police raid of a private party (Carolyn Van Houten, Chicago Tribune)

Stand on any corner. Close your eyes. Listen. So urges journalist and historian St. Sukie de la Croix in the introduction to his book, "Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall." You'll hear, he writes, the "rat-tat-tat-tat of Al Capone's machine guns, the Haymarket Rioters and the screams of the passengers on the SS Eastland capsizing into the Chicago River of 1915."

"Stand on the corner long enough," he adds, "peel away those cries of the past like the layers of an onion, and underneath you'll hear the whispering of ghosts as they tell their untold stories. These voices belong to lesbians and gay men locked in the closet of Chicago's past. Men and women who lead double lives, lying to the world by day, then turning up their collars to hide their frightened faces as they dart down litter-strewn alleys into unmarked bars at night."

De la Croix, inducted in 2012 into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, started listening to these "Chicago Whispers" in 1997, six years after arriving here from Britain. He spent years compiling and researching the stories found in this book, which traces LGBT men and women from the Native Americans who lived here before there was a "Chicago" up through the city's founding and explosive growth to Stonewall, the 1969 police raid on a New York City gay bar and subsequent demonstrations that is considered the spark of the modern gay rights movement.

"No one had every asked these people about their lives before," says de la Croix of those he interviewed for the book. "You don't realize until you talk to them that there was this incredible gay and lesbian life."

De la Croix is scrupulous about listing addresses that existed at the time, citing newspaper and magazine articles and offering a detailed bibliography of his sources. He's done this because he wants others to go out and find great LGBT stories for their own books, plays and movies.

"PaLeeze!! Why Should I be Mannish?" asks a hankie-carrying cartoon character shaped like a question mark in a 1934 newspaper ad for the K-9 Club, which boasted of "the oddest night club revue in Chicago." The club, which appears to have been located on the south side of the Gold Coast street, somewhere between where Bloomingdale's and Gucci are now, was a drag speakeasy. De la Croix gleefully notes in his book that the "girls" fled down a fire escape during a raid and the cop who tried to stop them was bopped in the head with a beer bottle.

"Everything has been written about Al Capone and the speakeasies, but there was another side,'' he says, explaining why the K-9 Club is on his personal LGBT history tour. "Gay and trans people were involved, too. We were a part of everything that was going on."

The K-9 Club tried to go legit after Prohibition — de la Croix wonders if that advertisement was a sign of "false confidence" — but it didn't last long. The city shut the club down in December 1934.

Stop 2: 909 N. Rush St.

Then: Diamond Lil'sNow: Ugg Australia store

Diamond Lil's offered "real Southern cooking" from 5 to 9 p.m.; same-sex dancing came later, according to de la Croix. A product of the short-lived "Pansy Craze" of the late 1920s, Diamond Lil's was operated by a man who called himself "Diamond Lil" after the character in Mae West's play. "Lil wears a red tie with a huge imitation diamond stick pin,'' wrote University of Chicago sociology students, who visited the club shortly after its 1928 opening."He makes no attempt to conceal what sort of place it is, in fact, by the use of such a name, he advertises it."

"I want people to know, especially young people, that we existed back then and we had fun," says de la Croix of Diamond Lil's. "That place sounds fun. It was run by a big queen who didn't care what anybody thought. At certain points in history we did have terrible lives but we also had great fun."

Stop 3: 669 N. State St.

Then: Windup LoungeNow: 2 East Erie condominiums

"File Charges Against 87 in Vice Net" was a page 1 headline in the Jan. 10, 1949, edition of the Chicago Tribune after police raided the Windup Lounge, which the newspaper described as "a notorious hangout for degenerates" in the Near North neighborhood.

Forty men and women were let go for "slumming" by police, but 91 others got hauled off to the police station. Among those arrested was a man identified in de la Croix's book as "Frank W." He told of being arrested and held in what was the drunk tank at the police station overnight. His family arrived with a lawyer in the morning and "bought" the arrest record, de la Croix writes.

A few days later, the Tribune's Tower Ticker columnist took a rather hard-boiled view of it all: "The windup of the Windup, State St. sin den where boy met boy before Police Capt. Harrison raided it, proves that the lower the lights, the greater the scandal power."

But de la Croix tells the Windup's story to show how a bar raid could impact a life, as the names, addresses and occupations of those arrested were publicized.

Henry Gerber was an army veteran turned postal worker in the early 1920s who founded the Society for Human Rights, the nation's first gay rights organization, and published its short-lived newsletter, "Friendship and Freedom," which de la Croix describes as the "first known homophile publication" in the United States. His former home, at 1701 N. Crilly Court in the Old Town Triangle district, is a Chicago landmark. But de la Croix chose instead for the tour this Near North spot because it is where he claims Gerber and other society leaders were arrested by police. De la Croix's account of the arrest is based on a July 13, 1925, story in the Chicago American newspaper, and it differs, as he notes in the book, from Gerber's own version, which has become the accepted re-telling of the story.

"His story came out when he was an old man,'' de la Croix says when asked about the discrepancies. "No one knew how or where he was arrested until I wrote the book …. No one ever found that newspaper account."

The arrests shut down the society and resulted in Gerber's discharge from the postal service. He moved to New York City and rejoined the army where he remained until retiring in 1945. Gerber also started a correspondence club called "Contacts," de la Croix writes, which served as a meeting place for homosexuals. Gerber died in 1972, at age 80, at the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen's Home in Washington, D.C.

"I want people to close their eyes and think back to a very brave man,'' says de la Croix. "He should be honored."

Stop 5: 116 E. Ohio St.

Then: Wind Blew InnNow: 600 N. Michigan retail complex

Whatever else was going on in the "Stygian darkness" of The Wind Blew Inn when police famously raided it in February 1922, the proprietor's assistant insisted to a judge there was no "snugglepupping" — whatever that means — going on among a crowd later described by The New York Times as "a score of university students, together with numerous long-haired men and bobbed-hair women."

"Read between those lines," laughs de la Croix of the Times' description of the inn, which once stood where the southern façade of the Eddie Bauer store is now.

To de la Croix, the Wind Blew Inn underscores the pivotal role of women in creating the surrounding neighborhood, Near North now but called Towertown then. "At a time when respectable women didn't smoke cigarettes, the women of Towertown strutted through alley smoking cigars and openly advocating ‘free love,''' he writes in "Chicago Whispers."

Managing the inn was a circus performer named Lillian Collier (whose name is sometimes spelled differently) and her "aid" (sic) Virginia Harrison. It was the latter who coined "snugglepupping." Old newspaper stories describe the two defending the inn against all complaints, including one from a neighbor about "syncopated blues piano" sounding at all hours. It was just a "simple restaurant serving tea," Collier insisted.

"I definitely would have hung out with them and drunk gin with them. They were fabulous," de la Croix says, laughing. "I want people to close their eyes and hear what syncopated blues piano is, whatever that is."

Curious Chicagoans had little chance to figure that out at the time; the inn burned down two months after that February raid made headlines.

Stop 6: 22 E. Van Buren St.

Then: Johnson's Health ClubNow: Parking lot.

Beefcake was big in the 1950s and 1960s. One leading proponent of the "physique culture" was Irvin Johnson, whom de la Croix describes as a dietitian, health expert — and gay. Johnson opened his club in the Loop, then began publishing "Tomorrow's Man" a popular health and fitness magazine that featured lots of before-and-after stories. De la Croix notes Johnson later moved to California, changed his name to Rheo H. Blair, billed himself as "Nutritionist to the Stars," and became a personal trainer.

"There was another side of gay life built up with body building and physique magazines,'' explains de la Croix. "It goes back in Chicago to the world's fair and Sandow the Magnificent. There was this whole culture of the masculine, the Adonis …. I don't think we have that anymore — or we do. We have all those people going to the gym."

Stop 7: 20 E. Goethe St.

Then and now: Residential property.

"Woodrif" was the password, $1 the admission, to what the Chicago Tribune called a May 1964 "sex party" at this Gold Coast apartment building next door to Chicago's famed Pump Room, whose patrons came out to watch the police raid.

"It was like an opening on Broadway, with women from the Pump Room in mink coats and guys wearing tuxedos and suits,'' one partygoer later told de la Croix. "The media were there with cameras rolling, the floodlights were turned on, and this guy comes out doing a Marilyn Monroe swish and blowing kisses to the crowd, before he gets shoved into the paddy wagon. A lot of the kids arrested were straight.";

Illinois was the first state to repeal its sodomy law in 1961 but, as de la Croix notes in choosing this locale, police could still raid a gay party — even a private one.

Located in Lincoln Park's Old Town Triangle neighborhood, the Lincoln Baths was, to one police lieutenant interviewed for a 1964 Tribune article on a raid, "a national meeting place for perverts."

"I want people to remember that gay men — or anybody — had very limited places to meet,'' says de la Croix. "At bars, you could make eye contact and leave. It was often possible at bathhouses to lock the door. Most of the time, it was relatively safe."

Unable to live together openly in a relationship, many gay men resorted to casual sex, he says, adding, "You couldn't meet people. It was very difficult. Anonymous sex was often the easiest to do."

Stop 9: 1942 N. Halsted St.

Then: Ballyhoo CaféNow: Residential property

A "pansy" nightclub of the 1930s managed by Marge and Mack, who de la Croix describes as "a butch woman and a camp man." Mack stood 6-foot-3 and performed in drag, notably singing a song called "Alice in the Little Blue Gown."

"This place was so camp,'' de la Croix exclaimed of the club, which was located in the Ranch Triangle neighborhood of Lincoln Park. "I wish I had been there so much. If I could buy a time machine I would be going back to the Ballyhoo."

De la Croix says the Blue Dahlia was The Baton of its day, a reference to the long-running Baton Show Lounge. But while The Baton is in River North close to downtown, the Blue Dahlia was in the North Austin neighborhood.

"It was in the middle of nowhere really and people would drive out there,'' he says. "I want to show that there were gay bars all over Chicago and not just in one area."

Stop 11: 144 N. Kedzie Ave.

Then: Home of Francis LeonNow: Vacant lot.

Who was Francis Leon? "It is a name familiar to the thousands of persons who have kept in touch with theatrical happenings of the last twenty-five years,'' exclaimed the Tribune in a June 1902 profile of the female impersonator enjoying retirement in a rooftop garden. Known simply as "The only Leon" he was "one of the greatest characters of his day,'' the Tribune added. "The female impersonations of Leon never have been surpassed in excellence, even if they have been approached."

Why visit this East Garfield Park neighborhood spot, just off the CTA Green line at Kedzie and Lake?

"Because of his life,'' de la Croix replies. "I mean, the man started by performing under cork, in blackface, in minstrel shows, and he performed at a benefit for Civil War wives, which, I don't know why, I find that amusing. Then there's this big queeny scrap in New York where his boyfriend shoots someone dead. What clinched it was that article in the Tribune on his garden. There was this unbelievable life, he's so famous, and this amazing female impersonator is interviewed at the end of his life in his garden, reading the newspaper."

Stop 12: 611 E. 63rd St.

Then: Kitty Kat ClubNow: Vacant lot

When Claudia McNeal as Lena Younger sets out to find her son, Walter Lee Younger, played by Sidney Poitier, in the 1961 film, "A Raisin in the Sun," she heads to the Kitty Kat Club. The bar appears briefly in the movie.

De la Croix calls the club, noted for its jazz, a gay bar in his book. Other sources refer to it as gay-friendly. Whatever, de la Croix writes that Kitty Kat "cashed in on their newfound fame" with ads in the Chicago Defender reading: "Hollywood's Choice, Make it Yours."

That a movie of that era contains actual footage of a gay club, especially an African-American one, is "remarkable," says de la Croix, who includes the site in his tour to show how LGBT people were accepted in the South Side's African-American community.

"Back then, there was more a sense of family,'' he says. "I would also like to point out that while blacks welcomed whites into their clubs the reverse was not true."

"Most unique Negro night club in America and one of the few hot spots in the country featuring female impersonators" is how a March 1948 Ebony magazine introduced Joe's Deluxe Club, "a popular back-of-the-bar rendezvous for make-believe ladies who are among the top entertainers in the South Side nitery belt."

The club was owned and operated by Joseph "Joe" Hughes, who de la Croix notes was voted mayor of Bronzeville, a largely honorary post, in 1939. Joe's Deluxe was noted for its Monday celebrity nights where prominent figures in politics, entertainment and sports would appear.

"I like the fact these female impersonation shows appealed to everybody'' de la Croix says.